Advanced cellular phones are used as platforms for consuming networked services such as services that are rendered through the Internet. Typically, such phones include an internet browser for surfing the Internet.
Typically, landline-based communication channels have a communication bandwidth (i.e., a rate of data transfer, or bit rate, measured in bits per second (“bps”)) that is broader than the communication bandwidth of wireless-based communication channels. Generally, the broader the communication bandwidth of a communication channel, the higher the rate of data transfer over the communication channel. Communication bandwidth, therefore, is a ‘priced resource’, which means that the broader the communication bandwidth consumed by a subscriber, the higher its cost would be to the subscriber.
Despite the on-going effort to speed up browsing speed of cellular phones, surfing the Internet via cellular phones is oftentimes annoying because the surfing speed of the phones is annoyingly slow relative to surfing speed of devices (e.g., Personal Computers) that have physical access to the Internet via a landline.
“HTML” (an abbreviation of “HyperText Markup Language”) is the predominant markup language for Web pages. HTML describes the structure of text-based information in a document by denoting certain text as links (which are called “hyperlinks”), headings, etc., and supplements that text with interactive forms, embedded images, and other objects such as widgets. HTML can also describe, to some degree, the appearance and semantics of a document, and can include embedded scripting language code (e.g., Java Script) that can affect the way Web browsers and other HTML processors handle documents. When a phone's user surfs the Internet, HTML pages are displayed on the phone's display. A hyperlinked text, called “hypertext”, on a currently displayed HTML page, when selected by the user, calls for another HTML page. Usually, hypertexts that call for other HTML pages are “public”, or “global”, which means that when a particular phone's user serfs the Internet, HTML pages (and the hyperlinks pointing at or referencing them) are not personalized; i.e., the same hyperlinks can likewise be used globally; i.e., every phone's user who uses a particular global hyperlink would essentially get the same HTML page.
Oftentimes when phone users select public/global hyperlinks (e.g., by “clicking” on them), they receive HTML pages that they are not interested in. Receiving unwanted HTML pages exacerbates the problem discussed above (i.e., annoying surfing experience) because phone users typically have to wait a considerable amount of time for HTML pages to be wirelessly downloaded onto their cellular phones. In addition, downloading of HTML pages that the user is not interested in may undesirably have to be repeated, thus increasing the wasted time and the annoyance level.
Hyperlinked texts are tagged (or, more generally, “marked”) terms/texts. Terms in HTML pages are marked using “Smart Tag” and “Autolinks” or similar tagging techniques. Briefly, “Smart tag” is a selection-based search feature that is used in some versions of Microsoft Word and in Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 8 web browsers by which an application recognizes certain words or types of data and converts them to a hyperlink. Within a web browser, a smart tag underlines the words it has been pre-programmed to react to, and inserts its own hyperlinks. A click on a hyperlink by a user takes the user to wherever the smart tag developer wants to take her/him. Briefly, “Autolinks” is a feature that, when activated, generates, on-the-fly, web links to web content in modules from text within the content. For example, if some content contains a name of a person, the Autolinks may be configured to identify the person's name and to assign to it a hyperlink to the person's personal web site.
Traditional marking of HTML pages is based on detection of textual patterns and words/terms in the displayed text, and on automatic linkage between detected textual patterns and words/terms to resources and to additional information (e.g., another HTML page). However, the additional information is not personalized and, therefore, may often be of limited interest or value to the user. For example, smart tags link to terms in texts that are contained in databases of local applications, and, therefore, they cannot be applied to terms that are displayed; e.g., on a PC's display device for the first time. AutoLinks are not personalized and they link the user to networked resources. Another tagging technique that is known as “Enriched Surfing” links the user to external network links.
Currently, some web sites are designed to provide personalized HTML pages to user devices, and some other web sites that are incapable of providing such information use a network server that performs that task. Regardless of whether a web site is capable of providing personalized information to a user device or uses a network server for that purpose, the user's device receives the personalized information only in real-time, meaning that the personalized information resides solely in the web site or in the network server servicing the web site, and the user's device has to be online (i.e., it has to communicate with the web site or network server) continuously in order to be able to receive personalized information. If the user's device is a wireless device (e.g., a cellular phone), the requirement for the device to be continuously online is problematic, for example because of the drawbacks resulting from the relatively small communication bandwidth of the wireless communication link, as explained above.
There is therefore a need to provide personal information to users of mobile communication devices more efficiently, both content-wise and speed-wise.